Let it Snow!
by Ellesdie
Summary: It wouldn't snow in Santa Barbara...would it?


This is my first story, and any comments or suggestions for improvement would be GREATLY appreciated. Especially if you think it's terrible, please review and tell me why so I can improve. Thanks!

Much gratitude to the wonderful Come Lady Death for her supportive help, patience, and encouragement. :) This would not have been possible without her.

Disclaimer: Shawn and Gus belong to the creators of Psych. Santa Barbara belongs to the state of California. Snow is free domain. This story belongs to me. No copyright infringement intended.

* * *

Shawn Spencer and Burton Guster walked into the Psych office from closing their latest case, slamming the door shut against the cold January wind. Shawn checked his watch eagerly as he took his coat off.

"Only…3 hours and 26 minutes until the snow starts!"

"Shawn, it's not gonna snow. We live in Santa Barbara. It doesn't snow here. We're on the coast and in the rain shadow of the Santa Ynez mountains. The last time Santa Barbara even saw a snowflake was in 1939, and they lasted for less than 10 minutes."

"You don't know that. You just know that it hasn't snowed. Doesn't mean that it won't snow, and certainly doesn't mean that it can't snow. In fact, the weather owes it to us, Gus," Spencer explained, fully convinced with his rationale.

"It's the weather, just atmospheric phenomenon. It can't owe anybody anything." Gus was not impressed with that reasoning.

Shawn closed his eyes and placed his fingers to the side of his head characteristically. "I am communing with the weather spirits," he intoned dramatically. "They confess that they have forced us to suffer by withholding their snow from us, and are now in our debt…" He shuddered suddenly, rubbing his arms as if to keep warm. "I am getting a vision – no, more of a feeling, of cold, lots of cold."

Gus snorted. "It's already col-"

Shawn lifted his hands and slowly brought them down with fluttering fingers as he cut his friend off. "White flakes, falling from the sky…" He began to hop around the room while continuing the motion with his hands.

"I know you're not psychic, Shawn."

"Wonderful snow, coming down as a gift from the weather spirits, bringing joy into everyone's lives – wait! Not for everyone." He appeared to snap out of his 'vision' and faced Gus again. "No wintery goodness for the unbelievers. No snow for poor Gus," he said in mock sympathy.

"That's impossible," Gus said confidently. "If it snows here, and it WON'T," he put in quickly, seeing the look on Shawn's face, "it would have to snow on the whole area. It couldn't snow on you, and not on me. That's just ridiculous."

"And that is why I'm the cool psychic detective, and you're just the sidekick."

Gus was about to continue arguing, but then changed his mind and just rolled his eyes. "Whatever Shawn. I have work to do." He went over to the desk and opened up his laptop.

"Fine. Go be boring. I will faithfully wait the next 3 hours and 22 minutes for the snow." 

"GUS! It's snowing!!" Shawn suddenly yelped from his position at the window.

"WHAT?!" Gus leapt up, knocking over his chair in the process, and raced over to the window, his face a picture of astonishment. He soon realized that Santa Barbara was about 1 snowflake short of actually having any snow, and glared angrily at his friend. "It's not snowing, Shawn."

Shawn, meanwhile, was rolling in laughter. "You should have seen your face!"

Gus was not nearly as amused. "It's not funny. I really believed you," he said disgustedly.

"If you had been paying attention, you would've known that we still have 2 hours and 17 minutes until the snow starts."

"That doesn't mean anything. Even the most experienced meteorologists can't predict the weather that accurately."

"So you admit that it's going to snow?" Shawn inquired triumphantly.

"No, it's not, I just didn't feel like arguing that point again. Besides, I have better things to do." He turned back to his desk. "And you're picking my chair back up, Shawn."

"You knocked it over," he retorted immediately.

"Because you lied to me."

"What are we, 8?" Shawn asked. "Be a man and pick up your own chair."

"No. You tricked me and made me knock it over, so you're picking it up." He folded his arms stubbornly, and then said after a pause, "I'm waiting."

Shawn rolled his eyes. "Fine." He walked across the room and stood the chair back up. "Happy now?"

"Yes Shawn, thank you," his friend replied with satisfaction as he sat back down to his computer. 

"It's snowing, Gus!! You have to come look!"

Gus started up, but then sat back down with a scowl. "Really, Shawn?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes! I can see the snowflakes!"

Then Gus bolted toward the window, but was met again with disappointment. "Why'd you tell me it was snowing? It's NOT snowing, Shawn!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, my psychic sense is overpowering my other senses!" Shawn feigned apology. "I saw the snowflakes with my psychic eyes, and thought I was seeing them with my physical eyes. That's how guaranteed the snow is!" he insisted. "The future snow is overpowering my mundane and currently snowless world, taking it by force!"

Gus rolled his eyes. "You won't be able to fool me again," he said smugly while turning back to his computer. "I'm smarter than those villagers."

Shawn looked around for some explanation. "Dude, what villagers?" He was genuinely confused with where the other man was going with this.

"From the boy who cried wolf. You're gonna end up just like that boy, Shawn. One day, you'll really have something important to tell, and nobody will listen. You could even end up dead if you don't quit lying and tricking people like that."

"Pssh, relax," Shawn laughed. "I'm so much smarter than that kid. Plus, I'm psychic!"

"Yeah, yeah, that's what they all say…" Gus muttered.

"Since when do they all claim to be psychic?"

Gus looked witheringly over at Shawn. "I mean the attitude in general. Everyone thinks they're the invulnerable one, that they're so much better than everyone else, and that it will never happen to them. And they're always wrong."

"You are exactly right, Gus. All of those other people are always wrong when they think they're the best. And you know why? Because they're not me." 

"GUSGUSGUSGUSGUS! IT'S SNOWING!! Comeseecomeseecomesee!" Shawn jumped up and down gleefully by the window.

"No Shawn. I'm not falling for that again," Gus said with a groan, not even turning around. A few moments passed without any argument. "I know what you're doing, and it's not gonna work." After another few minutes of silence, Gus started to get worried. "Shawn?" With a sigh, he looked over his shoulder to check on his friend –

And a cold, wet, ball landed solidly on his face. When had Gus refused to acknowledge Shawn's excitement, the latter had snuck outside, gathered what little snow existed to form into a ball, and then crept back in to launch it at Gus. After spluttering in cold surprise, Gus raced outside after Shawn.

"It is snowing!! It's really snowing!!" he exclaimed with a delighted laugh as he gazed up at the sky and held out his hands to catch the falling snowflakes.

"And…right on time," Shawn said with a triumphant grin after checking his watch. "Precisely 7:51."

"How could you possibly have known that? It's almost impossible to predict the weather that accurately." Gus was in astonished disbelief.

"Keyword being 'almost'. Almost impossible. Not entirely impossible. Which makes it completely possible for a psychic," Shawn said dramatically, striking his hands-to-head-and-eyes-squinted pose. Now it was Gus' turn to catch the other by surprise. He quickly gather the snow on his still outstretched hands (it was falling quickly by now) and threw it at Shawn while his eyes were too closed to see, giggling at boyishly at the look on Shawn's face as the small snowball struck its target.

"Oh, it's on now!" Shawn hollered as he bent down and began to gather snowballs.

Gus ran down the side of the building a little ways and started building his own arsenal. This was a new experience for him, but he had read much on snowball-making procedure, and was overjoyed at the chance to try it. Being deeply engrossed in this occupation, he didn't notice a few minutes later as Shawn snuck up with his arms full of his hastily-constructed snowballs, until he started pummeling Gus with his cold projectiles at a close range. Gus quickly returned fire with his more thoroughly crafted snowballs that hit with more impact than did Shawn's, which tended to crumble right before reaching Gus, merely coating him with their white powder. On the other hand, Gus ran out of his store pretty quickly since carefully packing did take longer, and was forced to resort to a lower-quality and higher-speed process of snowball creation while under fire. Soon, their snowball fight disintegrated into the tossing of handfuls of snow onto each other, both laughing giddily.

"Snowman time!!" Shawn announced suddenly, dropping to his knees and beginning to collect snow from around him to roll into a ball. Gus then started work on a separate ball of snow several feet away. When they had grown to considerable size, Gus rolled his (the smaller one) over and together they tried to stack it on top of Shawn's. Unfortunately, it fell apart when they lifted it off the ground. At Gus' suggestion, this time they began piling another layer of snow on top of the first ball, and then formed it into a ball. This took longer than it had the first time, but at least it worked. By this point, it had stopped snowing, but there was still a nice blanket covering Santa Barbara.

"Gus, meet Parnell Irwin Quinian. Parnell, this is my friend Burton Guster," Shawn introduced.

"Parnell Irwin Quinian?" Gus repeated dubiously. "What kind of a name is that?"

"Shh! You'll hurt his feelings. I know he looks cold, but his heart's as gentle as a teddy bear."

"Shawn, that doesn't make any sense."

"He seems like he's missing something…" Shawn mused as they beheld their creation of snow. Then with a shrug, never one to stick with any one thing for too long, he spied more untouched snow around the corner and ran over there, throwing himself to the ground enthusiastically. Drenched as he already was, lying in the snow couldn't make him any wetter than he already was (not that he cared). Gus contemplated their snowman a moment longer before joining his friend. Extending arms and legs, they proceeded to make snow angels. After the initial two, Shawn carefully positioned Gus and himself each time so that all of the following the angel-shaped imprints all appeared to be in a line on top of each other.

"Dude! I think we just made the tallest tower of snow angels ever!" he declared to Gus.

"That isn't a tower. You can't have a tower of snow angels, and you can't measure how tall it is."

"Yes you can. We just made one and did."

"No, you can't. Snow angels are just 2D, Shawn," Gus maintained.

"What are you talking about? That tower is clearly more than 2 deep. It's more like 20 deep." Shawn paced back along them, assessing their numbers.

"2 dimensional. That means it can't have height. We just have a line of snow angels."

"You just can't understand it because you doubted the snow. You weren't a true believer."

Gus scoffed. "I thought you said I wouldn't get any snow at all."  
"Well, after much pleading with the snow spirits, I convinced them that you weren't really all that bad, just a little slow, and that you'd come around eventually. They relented and allowed you to enjoy the snow too." Gus just rolled his eyes. "Dude, I just realized what Quinny's missing!" Shawn took off back around the building and ran into their office, Gus following. A moment later, they came back out, Shawn carrying something triumphantly. He marched over to the snowman and placed a pineapple on top with a grin.


End file.
